


When a Witcher Goes A-Witchin'

by wraithnoir



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: First Person, M/M, Monster of the Week, i may be even more annoying than he is, trying out something new, you should know that i sing aloud everything i have jaskier sing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:35:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22076308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wraithnoir/pseuds/wraithnoir
Summary: Jaskier has tagged along with Geralt as the witcher heads to a village of some evil renown. Meaning to part ways at a fork in the road that doesn't seem to appear, the two end up together, and depending on one another, more than either had wanted. Will Jaskier actually be of help? Will Geralt learn to carry a tune? The future, as they say, is mystery.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 13
Kudos: 107
Collections: GERALT AND JASKIER ARE FUCKING GAY





	1. Two Towns

“Mine eye...mine eye.” A pause, short but pregnant with emotion. “Mine...eye!” No, too high, bring it down an octave. “Mine eye.” That was two octaves, so let’s try to level it out. “Mine eye.” Too sharp; moderate and draw it out. “Mine...eye…” Oh, maybe that’s on to something. A little higher on the second syllable. “Mine eye? Mine eye! Mine...eye?” Maybe I’m going about this completely backwards. Maybe it should start out higher, then slide down slowly on the second word? “Mine eye.” Too high to start. “Mine eye. Mine...eye? Mine….eye…” 

I paused again, reaching for the waterskin next to me. Writing music is exhausting work. An entire song can be hinged on one flourish of notes, one turn of phrase, and therefore every flourish and every turn has to really be a bit of a gut hook. Which is...a terrible turn of phrase, I’ve made myself half sick just thinking about it. A gut hook? My mind conjures the images unbidden, and the hook itself is drawn out in elegant silver, with a smooth but decorated handle while the other end does a little dip before the book comes about and shapes itself over with a dainty and nasty little pointed bit at the termination of the curl. That’s what goes in first, I expect, to snag onto something soft and juicy and…

This is terrible. Forget I said anything. Let’s go back to eyes.

Not hooks and eyes. Just...eyes. And music. Which is where eyes are at their most glorious, truth be told. Because in songs, eyes do things like sparkle and gleam. They moisten with the most delicate of tears. They shine, they tremble. They grow depthless and dark, they close in ecstasy. Really, entire human lifetimes and postures and experiences are gone through just in the eyes in songs. I daresay, they don’t really even need the rest of the body. They could go it alone. 

Which is why, as I was relating, as I was singing, that it was so very important to catch the right notes from the muse to perfectly render these particular eyes. I had actually extended my hand as though it was just there out of reach, those coy, bashful notes, and all it would take would be a little flutter of my fingers, enticing them, calling them close so I could snatch them out of the...the…

I was suddenly aware of particular eyes that were not the eyes of the song. When someone describes to you the eyes of a Witcher, they likely have not actually met one. So the descriptions vary wildly, and obviously, they don’t tend to be flattering. Devil-dark, that’s a popular one. Worm-eaten and still, that’s another poetic option. Murderous, you hear that one a lot because it’s short, doesn’t require an extensive vocabulary, and is altogether accurate.

That is to say, I was being watched by murderous eyes. Those murderous eyes were set in the face of a witcher I have been instructed multiple times not to refer to as “my witcher,” for sundry and unelaborated-upon reasons. Geralt’s eyes were nothing like the eyes that are most commonly sung about in ballads, be they tragic or otherwise. That level of intensity is hard to put into words without immediately evoking images of small insects going about their merry way when suddenly they are caught in a beam of sunlight through a carefully ground lens, leading to inevitable conflagration and generally death. The lens was invisible, but I was a bit pinned, nonetheless.

“What?” I asked.

Geralt released me from his gaze and looked down to the map unrolled over his knees once again. It’s so hard to guess what he’s thinking much of the time. His fingers spread out one corner of the map a bit more where it had curled over itself. The silence was deafening, so I did what I could to dispel it; my fingers pulled a little melody out of the lute, the strings sweet in the late afternoon air. It was rare to make camp so early in the day, but apparently we’d gotten a bit turned around, a rarity for Geralt to even admit. But the man can look at a map as though he thinks his eyes will bore through the ink to the secrets that lie between it and the paper it was drawn on, and he’d been doing that for, oh, probably six hours now.

Three hours.

Forty minutes or so. 

In any event, I wouldn’t say I was bored, but I’m not one to waste time and new ballads are the lifeblood (and continued revenue) of a traveling bard, so I put myself to work, and honestly, it was considerably harder work than whatever Geralt was doing. He has a skill for holding himself in one position for a long time, though, so if he ever wanted to give up the whole witcher thing, he probably would have a lucrative career awaiting him in modeling for sculptors. Holding still is something artists prize in a model. I suppose he has a few other things going for him as well. I’m not looking to make a list but consider, as an example, thighs with muscles that are as defined as tree roots and that are about as thick around as...my waist? I don’t particularly like that comparison, but I’ve had his thighs near my waist and it’s pretty apt. 

So anyway, the song was coming together in my capable hands, and like any other artist, I needed to mold the difficult bits with more care. Playing the line before my troublesome phrase again, I hummed myself into place. 

“Hmm, mm-mm, no more sweet to mine...eye…” I wrinkled my nose and looked away into the distance to let my inner ear hear it again. “Mine eye. Mine eye? Mine...eye…”

“Jaskier!”

I looked back to find Geralt glaring at me again. I hadn’t even done anything!

“What? Is it dinner time finally?” I was starving, playing to the accompaniment of my growling stomach. It burbled as I enjoyed some quick grace notes with my fingers. I have extremely talented fingers. I have been assured of that by many delighted people, so I’m not just puffing myself up here.  
“No. I want you to stop...whatever it is you’re chanting over there,” Geralt grated out between his teeth. 

“Chanting?”

“I assume you’re trying to raise something undead.” Geralt looked back down to his bloody map.

“Haha, you’re a lively wit when you want to be. This song has all the makings of the midwinter favorite,” I told him primly. “Last midwinter, I had a perfect little number worked up but then, as fate would have it, Karamindel, a bard of absolutely infamous renown and in whose jerkin lies no heart and in whose breeches lies no-” 

“Jaskier.” 

I stopped and looked over at Geralt again. I could tell it had been a long day, and one full of frustrations for him, as his hair was pulling free of its leather tie and was framing his face almost sweetly. However, he was also baring his teeth slightly, and the sight of those sharpened canines was less sweet. Intentionally so, obviously. I ran through a little silent fingering on the fretboard of the lute, watching him right back with a bit of a pout.

“I do hope you’re not protecting Karamindel’s honor, because if that’s the case, I’m going to be very put out with you.” My disappointed expression should have worked wonders. Instead, Geralt exhaled, slowly and with expressive meaning, through his nose as he looked back down to the map. “Well?”

“Come here,” he grunted. 

I would have protested longer, but it’s a bit on the rare side to be invited over like that. So I rose from my enthroning rock and walked over, leaning over Geralt’s shoulder to look down at the map that had so captivated his attention. 

I stared down at it.

He stared down at it.

The silence grew, once again, oppressive, and if I didn’t fill it, I knew some tragedy would befall us. I always feel that way in silent moment and silent places.

“What am I looking at?” I asked finally. 

“The road to Hahler,” he said. “We started here...and rode along this path.” I followed his thick forefinger as he dragged it along a line drawn in heavy black ink. In truth, the map was hard to look at; age had weathered not only the paper but the ink as well, drawing away its former brilliance and boldness and fading some words into echoes and turning some areas with what had probably been helpful little pictures into messy smudges. The edges of the map also looked like they’d been dipped into less than pleasant liquids at some point. Maybe several points. “Here is Hahler.” He paused with his finger on a spot. “This is where we are.”

I straightened up and looked around, one hand on my hip. Perhaps there was a town and we had missed it? The forest spread out around us, the sun starting to dip lower and create dappled shadows that would quickly engulf everything with dark. If there was a town, it was doing a magnificent job of camouflage. 

“Well...I always hate to call someone a liar, but...there’s no town here.” I looked down at Geralt, who hadn’t even bothered to look up at me. Cheeky.

“No...because there are two Hahlers on the map, as you can see by the legend down here.” I bent down again to see what he was referring to. The legend was not just a little bit on the map to explain the distances and icons, it was something that was accessed when Geralt folded one corner in toward the center, then licked his thumb and stroked the pad of it along the seam. 

Immediately words sprang up, much darker than any of the words on the rest of the map had been. The town names were listed in order of...well, I have no idea, but Hahler was listed twice. 

“There can’t be two Hahlers, can there be?” I asked. “Frankly, that’s very unoriginal on the part of the founders of the second one.” I glanced over the map. “Where’s the second one then?” 

Geralt made a noise that can only be written as “hmm,” then he tapped his finger on the second Hahler in the list. A dark line seemed to grow like a vine away from his fingertip, traveling up the road we had followed for the entire day before branching off from where we now stood and heading east. I saw now why Geralt had spread the map-- the dark line edged its way out to the side that had curled in, as maps are wont to do, particularly when you don’t want them to.

Being one of the most helpful men to be found, I reached down and tapped Geralt’s hand when he tried to uncurl the edge. The whole map would have rolled itself up had he done it, as one hand was holding the one side while his other hand followed the new path to the second Hahler. Carefully, and a bit distastefully considering the state of the map’s edge, I uncurled it to reveal where the dark line led us.

Unfortunately, what I revealed was...nothing. The corner of the map was gone, torn away and edged with that morbid whatever-it-was that had gotten on that whole side. The magical dark line ended at the ragged tear, giving no indication how much further along Hahler actually was.

“Well, that’s a bit rude,” I said, looking down at the empty space. “Is there a sort of, you know, magic way to get that back?”

“Fuck,” Geralt muttered, pulling the map away and standing up in a rush. There was actual air movement; he stands with the force of a foothill deciding it wanted to be more upright. Walking over to Roach, he stuffed the map back into one of the saddle packs and mounted up. 

I was still standing next to the rock he’d been sitting on, one hand holding my lute.

“Wait...where are we going?” While it had been afternoon when we paused, evening was definitely coming on now. “Aren’t we camping here?”

“No. I want to be further along before we stop for the night,” he said roughly. “We’ll have to go hunting the old way.” 

I imagined that meant he’d sniff it out or something. “I’ll trip and break my neck if we follow that wretched road in the dark. It’s more holes than packed ground.” 

It’s a good thing I didn’t expect sympathy, as I didn’t receive any, just a grunt of acknowledgement. At least Geralt agreed. I sighed as I put my lute back into its case and fell into step beside Roach. 

“Stay close.” 

The words were more grumbled than spoken, and they were such a surprise that I confess it took me a moment to translate them, as though they were in a language I had only flirted with.

“Beg pardon?” 

“You heard me.” He didn’t repeat it, but I heard it again in my head and smiled. Don’t go getting lost, Jaskier, those two words said. I do need you around. 

To hunt up towns on magical maps with copied names that something bled all over and ate. Exactly, the best type of situation for me to be in.


	2. Empty Streets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the road lengthens, our heroes find a town...though it's not the town they're looking for. Mysteries abound, and Jaskier's penchant for finding trouble isn't as absent as Geralt would prefer.

Traveling is part and parcel of adopting the life of a bard. A troubadour. Whatever word you want to attach to a pivotal occupation that receives a lot of mockery when, really, everyone wants music for all of their occasions. Feasts, weddings, executions-- who’s going to remember having a good time if the music was subpar? And trust me, there are more than enough subpar musicians out there besmirching our profession. It’s not just the ability to pluck a few strings in a sequence, or have a mildly pleasant voice with which to carry a tune. Maybe my standards are just a little bit higher because I see so much more in it. One has to be able to master complicated fingerings...of all kinds. One must remember the important things (genealogies, battles, the words to songs with odd rhyming schemes) and also the very important things (who’s got a finger or a genital in someone else’s pie, who you borrowed that velvet jerkin from in the extremely long term and who might want it back, which rude words always get a laugh from an audience). One must content oneself with cheap beer and learn to let that be enough. One must endure strange bedfellows. The stranger the better, I always say. One must, of course, write one’s own songs, because while the people love a rowdy drinking song they can sing along with and a shanty with a catchy chorus always gets the crowd involved, it’s the creation of ballads with your own special touch, your own unique voice, your own wee flourishes that puts a Jaskier-shaped hole in their hearts. That’s how you leave them wanting more.

But truly, a great portion of a bard’s time is taken up with the traveling of place to place. There are a lot of open bits of road between small towns, and to get from town to town, it’s the song of your own boots on the road you hear for a good amount of time. Now, time traveling is not time wasted. That’s where adventure happens, so that’s where inspiration happens. And in between the adventures, that’s the time to compose the songs that will one day make one’s mark on the world. 

The road is also long and boring and dusty and full of holes and sometimes horse shit. Also brigands and traveling missionaries who try to convert you to things you couldn’t possibly believe and people who will literally knock you down and steal your boots. 

It’s a hard life that I have chosen! I bear it all with exceeding grace. And great hair. 

In any case, the road I was traveling to Hahler was not traveled alone, for by my side, riding whilst I trudged, was Geralt of Rivia. I wanted the apple in his bag. So did Roach. Who knows what Geralt wanted. 

“When an archer loosed his bow, hey ho, they sing, hey ho,  
And the cock was known to crow, sing hey ho, aye, hey ho!  
‘Tis not for maid to watch at home, hey ho, they sing, hey ho,  
Not yet a lad to mind his bum, hey h--”

“Stop.” 

I looked up from where I had been watching my feet step one in front of the other to make sure I didn’t tumble into one of the almost cavernous holes that the horrible road was primarily made of. Geralt said nothing else, and he wasn’t even looking at me. Some people are just very picky about traveling music. 

I decided to take a different tack, a spritely melody that never fails to cheer.

“‘Twas in the merry month of-”

“No.” 

I paused, looking up at him again. “The merry month of no is not an option, Geralt, and you absolutely know that.”

“No as in no singing.” As I sputtered together my perfectly formed argument, the witcher leaned down and put his first two gloved fingers over my mouth. I will confess, I stilled immediately. What did he want me to do now? I have a very particular talent for removing a lover’s glove with a very delicate nibble and a tug that shows off my neck to great advantage. Could it be he wanted to see that delicious little trick? 

Could he? Finally? I readied my teeth.

“You’re noisy,” Geralt hissed between his own clenched teeth. “And your noise is attracting attention.”

Which was literally the point, but then I heard Roach nicker and huff, her ears flattening back against her head. Generally not a good sign, and it was further made not good by an ominous rustling in the thick foliage by the side of the road. Now, I would argue that any noise would have drawn out whatever that was, even just the sound of a horse’s hooves on the road. But I also couldn’t argue that it seemed potentially aggressive and also put a distinct damper on any ideas of seductive glove removal. Why is it that you have a really good skill, no one needs it? 

“Well…” I swallowed, eyes on the brush. “Aren’t you going to...stick it?”

“Stick it?” he asked archly, slowly sitting up again. 

“You know? With a sword? As you...do?” I didn’t feel that I should be the one telling him how to do his job, but everyone needs an emotional boost now and then. 

“No.” He stroked Roach’s neck to calm her, then gave her a little press with his heels to get her moving again. I jogged a step to catch up, looking back over my shoulder. Nothing emerged onto the road, at least not while I was looking. There was nothing I could do to shake the sensation that there were eyes fixed on my back whenever I was facing forward, intense, probably hungry eyes that were sizing me up, deciding how precisely to peel me into long delectable bard strips for dinner. 

The time passed incredibly quickly as I awaited doom from behind us, and the sun was setting hastily anyway. Nothing had appeared ahead of us as we went either, though I had high hopes for the sudden golden gleam of a lit town or even a dimly glowing village through the parting trees. But the road continued on, the dense woods around continued on, and I was beginning to fear traveling on into the darkest hours of the night when Geralt grunted. When I looked at him, the moonlight was limning his pale hair and outlining his sharp features. 

“What? I didn’t even say anything? I was too concerned by whatever was apparently planning on eating exclusively me,” I said testily. “So you’ll have to blame someone else if you must.”

“We’re stopping here for the night,” Geralt said calmly, voice unbothered and unhurried. “There’s a stream.” He walked Roach off the road, leaving me to catch up as though I was the animal companion and they two were the adventurers. 

A fire made for a cheerier centerpiece, and by its light, I was able to jot down a few of the lyrics that had been spinning through my brain for the greater part of the day. Geralt settled his own blankets on the far side of the fire from me, sociable as ever. It’s not worth getting upset over really, except when it’s cold. The sound of the water was soothing, not the rushing of a river but the gentle burbling of something not full of scaly, slimy creatures about to rise up from the dark waters to kill you. So not to skip a bit, but the night was dull, mostly full of sleep, no worthy dreams of note, and breakfast wasn’t particularly exciting either (if you are wondering, it was fish). 

Travel resumed the following morning, and it’s much easier to face the unknown in the bright light that filters through the leaves overhead. I hummed to myself, reworking a tune that had come to me in a minor key but seemed to be better suited to a major key with a few adjustments. I was curious about playing with both, which would work out quite nicely with a romantic but slightly bawdy song I had been bandying about for a few days. As we walked, I counted off the beat of it to the sound of Roach’s hooves on the ground, Geralt’s silence being taken as obvious approval. I was also trying not to think about the sensation of his fingers on my mouth the night before, the press of his fingertips through the gloves against the slight parting in my lips. That is a dangerous line of thought and leads to foolish and suicidal contemplations. Suicide by witcher. 

By noon, my stomach was wishing for more fish, and I was regaling Geralt with a descriptive listing of the dishes at a feast I had been a guest for a year before. Alright, I was not a guest, I was technically entertainment, and I was not served any of the dishes but I have a quick hand when servers pass by me. 

“I don’t think you quite understand the magnificence of these pies, Geralt. The crust flaked away and led me into paradise, where gravy flowed down my throat, thick with all the promise of a full, warm belly. I have had pies in my day that seemed to be the best, but this one, ah, I licked my lips to not allow one morsel to escape.” I paused. “Are you even listening to me, Geralt? You haven’t even made one single appreciative or envious sound while I’ve been talking.”

“There. Ahead.” He gestured to a widening in the road. As we grew closer, the widening became the gate of a town, leading into a square.  
“Ah, that’s a good sign!” I was already mentally halfway into a bowl of stew and a mug of ale, and honestly, the more rustic the better. When you’re really hungry, sometimes it’s a relief to have something without pretense. Then when you spill some on your shirt, you don't judge yourself as harshly. “A bed! A fire! A girl to serve the food with a wicked smile.”

“Mm, likely because she’s poisoning you,” Geralt replied. He has literally the worst sense of humor. Humor that nobody else wants. “But look...something’s wrong.” 

We had made it past the unguarded village gate, but I didn’t see what was wrong with that at first. Small villages pass a lot of the time without guards posted, unless there is open war in the country. I was about to say so until I noticed that that wasn’t what Geralt was talking about at all. The village square was quiet and empty, with a fountain that only faintly burbled and flagstones that were starting to pull apart where the gentle force of green, growing things were pushing up between them all around. It was too early to see lantern light in any of the windows, but it was certainly past time to see smoke rising from busy chimneys. The air above the houses was clear, the windows unshuttered but with no hint of movement behind the panes. The doors were all closed, no one shouting out of one to a neighbor smacking a dusty coverlet against the lintel. There was simply no noise, no barking of dogs, no clucking of hens in the empty pens beside some of the houses. A more careful look revealed the telltale signs of neglect and age-- paint peeling from windowsills and thatch that had gone moldy and fallen in. 

Roach’s hooves rang on the stones as we moved through the town, providing the only noise in the street. I was fairly sure that ours were the only breaths as well. It took me another moment to realize that I had begun to tense up, not for fear of attack, but against the inevitable discovery of the corpses of those who had called this village home. I’d definitely seen it before, coming upon what should have been a quaint little stop on the road only to find the stinking stack of bodies still smoldering from the fire their plunderers had set. Or in one case, I had come upon a town as adorable as could be imagined, with flowers still nodding brightly in window boxes and a pole with ribbons standing in the center of the town square ready for the dancers. It had taken me some time to understand what had happened, an illness that had struck them all down, so quickly they had still been about their festival preparations. Do you know I had actually almost snuck a tart from one of the laden tables before I found that first body? To this day I don’t know what actually came over them, whether it was a tainted traveller, a curse, or the water in the well going bad, but I hied myself as quickly as I could hie out of there and expected death to come upon me without warning for probably a week after. 

In good news, I hadn’t died. In bad news, it was becoming very clear that this village had been emptied by an unknown hand. 

We found no bodies, no graves, no sign of people at all.

Geralt knocked on a door, which opened to his hand. “There are no signs of struggle, or even that the villagers were preparing to flee. Everything is still in order.” He frowned as he looked around the dusty main room of the little house. “No food left out, no boxes left open. There are no signs one way or the other.” 

I was poking around and found a bottle of wine that had been left, abandoned, whatever. I held it up. “Don’t think they’d mind if we had this then, hmm? One way or another?”

“Put it back, Jaskier. We don’t steal from the…” He trailed off, not sure what to call those we would be taking from. The dead? The disappeared? The fled? The evaporated? I set the bottle down with a sigh and followed him back out into the street. 

“The whole place is like this. Not a house among them occupied.” We checked a few of the others, but they were all identically empty, each as orderly and abandoned as the first. No people, no animals. No monsters even, nothing lying in wait. I relaxed even as Geralt grew tenser. As I said, I’d seen this before. 

“No animals either,” I mentioned helpfully. Roach walked behind us, her uneasy ears mirroring exactly how we two men felt. Had we such mobile ears, I’m rather certain we all would have been holding them at the same precise unhappy angle. 

Continuing down the road, it was painfully monotonous after a bit. Geralt’s eyes were just as intense as they roved over each house, each stable, each empty cart and market stall, but mine…well, mine had a tendency to wander. One can only look at so many empty windows, so many shopkeeper-less shops before one’s guard is bound to drop. Whether they fled or were taken hostage by an army that then politely tidied up after them, whether they had all been spirited away by pixies or swallowed in whole gulps by a family of famished dragons, it was becoming very clear that there was no one around. Not to attack us, not to give us directions, and, most troublingly, not to make us dinner. 

We reached the outskirts of the village rather quickly, even with our careful observations. It wasn’t a large settlement, and the road took us through a small orchard with bright and verdant leaves. Sadly, the trees must have already been harvested for the season, and they were without any colorful spots of ripe fruit dotting the branches. Further on ahead, there was a squat sort of house, the stones used in its construction dark grey and heavy. The walls seemed to bulge at the center, as though the curved tile roof was too heavy to be supported-- it gave the house an almost rounded shape where it hunched among the trees. In truth, it wasn’t unappealing. The sun came through the partings of the branches and made the tiles of the roof shine red and sweet. The front step was so neatly kept free of twigs and fallen leaves one could swear that it had been swept that very morning.

Geralt moved toward the house, apparently unsatisfied by the state of literally every other house in the entire town. I dawdled behind, contemplating the trunk of one of the trees. There was something carved into the bark, something I at first had taken for some rude words as one sometimes sees in those less-reputable orchards around various kingdoms. I squinted at it, trying to make out what it said, but the lines seemed to shift away from my gaze, or my eyes would glance away from it no matter how I tried to focus. On my third try, my eyes found themselves away from the marked trunk of the tree but noticing something else. Maybe my stomach directed by eyes, but there, nestled under a little canopy of leaves that it wore like a crown, was quite possibly the loveliest apple I had ever set eyes on. 

The skin was redder than blood, the light nearly twinkling on its shiny surface. It was clearly ripe, plump and round, and when I reached over, it nearly threw itself into my hand. I brushed my thumb across the skin, marveling at how perfect it was. I could nearly see my reflection in its red skin. Already I was imagining the first bite, how the red would give beneath my teeth, then the rush of juice around my tongue. Sweet, but with a slight tang to remind me of my own mortality. 

“Jaskier! No!” 

Why do people say things like that after I’ve already done whatever it is they don’t want me to do? The first bite of the apple was already a memory and my mouth was open for the second. 

“What? Oh, don’t be such a baby. You can have a few bites as well, if you’re going to cry about it,” I said, walking toward him.

At least, I intended to walk toward him. However, my feet were rooted to the road beneath my boots. Of course, one tries to tell oneself that one has stepped in something sticky and will need to take the boots off, hop about barefoot, and pry the soles up off the stones, but one is always lying to oneself. I was stuck. Might as well give it voice.

“I’m, er...stuck.”

“Drop the apple and come here,” Geralt commanded. Dropping the apple was easy-- I flung it with a weird pivot at the waist that wasn’t entirely graceful, but it was at least effective. Walking, so much less so.

“What part of ‘I’m stuck’ did you not comprehend, Geralt. I am stuck, adhered.” I sang it with a lilting rise that was also the vocal note of panic. “I am stuck!”

“Of course you are,” came an annoyed voice from the direction of the slumpy pumpkin-shaped house nestled in this blasted orchard. “Why the hell are you eating my apples?”


	3. Don't Trust an Apple Tree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caught in a strange apple orchard and with its strange owner, Geralt and Jaskier try to figure out the mysteries of the empty village. Jaskier also tries to figure out the mystery of how to get the Witcher to come just a little bit closer.

“Don’t make me repeat it again,” the angry voice spat at us from the direction of the slumpy house. I looked at Geralt. He looked at me, then looked away from my obvious plight and toward the house. I assumed he would draw his sword, considering we were obviously not dealing with someone who was friendly if they were prepared to glue visitors to the walkway.  
He did not draw his sword, only turned and walked a few steps closer to the house. This left me much more vulnerable, which I did not like, though I was able to watch him walk away, which, I’ll be honest, was a gift. Those breeches are brave, so very brave.

“Your apples? Who are you then?” Geralt asked in his low, mildly amused voice. It likely sounds growly to most people, but as a trained singer, I’ve learned to interpret the moods of his various growls. I had no view of the original speaker at all, though her voice carried, hoarse with what sounded more like lack of sleep than anything else.

“The owner of the orchard from which your friend so blithely stole an apple. Or will you deny it now?” Her voice had grown slightly closer, but as you may remember, I was rather rooted to the spot. 

I glanced down and found my wording grotesquely apt. The chestnut leather of my boots was now tough and barky, with strange tendrils that were indeed root-like as they branched off my feet and burrowed themselves into the loamy ground. I tried to wiggle my toes and found them stiff, a strange scratchy sensation as if they too were gone to wood. My heart rate suddenly doubled its tempo, the apple taste in my mouth gone sour as vinegar.

“Geralt?”

“He’s not my friend,” my terrible friend was just saying. “We’re just passing through.”

“Oh, passing through. With a bit of thieving on the side?” The owner of the voice stepped past Geralt, something in her shoes ringing louder than the iron shod onto Roach’s hooves. Her hair was rusty red and pulled into messy knots all over her head. I hoped it wasn’t some sort of apple homage. Hopefully I hadn’t gotten on the bad side of some apple acolyte. Looking after my own life, I resolved not to make any pie jokes. Obviously, I stood my ground as she approached and walked a slow circle around me. 

“He’s a walking, singing stomach,” Geralt said evenly, taking a few steps toward us but not really intervening yet. I widened my eyes at him and gestured to my feet. He acted as though I was being frivolous, as though I’d asked him to compliment my new boots in the middle of a battle. “You might as well let him go.” A moment’s pause. “We’ll pay for the apple.”

“It was the last of the season,” the woman said sharply. 

“But not the last apple ever,” he replied easily, ducking his head slightly. “Please. Let him go.” He closed one hand on the sword belt across his chest, a subtle warning. I hoped it wasn’t too subtle. The soles of my feet were itchy and strange and my ankles were immobile. Would I bleed maple syrup? 

Her eyes slid from his hand to his face, expression hardening then expanding before it settled back into what seemed to be her habitual annoyance with the world. The gesture she made was almost dismissive, but it made the trees in the orchard groan slightly, their branches whispering against one another as they shifted. I felt the moment I was all flesh again, a shocking flash of weakness about the joints and the intense relief of being able to wiggle my toes. I vowed never to take it for granted again. 

“Alright, yes, that’s all very good,” I said as I edged past her on the path to take my place beside Geralt. “All’s well that ends well. We should, ah, be going.” I shook out my foot, still feeling a bit of that strange barky stiffness in my ankle. 

“I haven’t asked for payment yet,” the woman said. Geralt’s hand had lowered to his side again and he watched her curiously. She held his eyes as she walked past us toward the house. When I looked at the way the stones slumped now, I saw in the roundness of the structure a bit of an apple, though grey and crusty and old and completely inedible. Damn that scrumptious fruit, I thought to myself. I didn’t even get to finish it, and here we were in this mess.

Geralt, oddly, has a certain grace in situations like this, and I can’t imagine where it even comes from. Not that he lacks table manners (when they’re called on) or drags mud unnecessarily into an inn (guts, on the other hand, drip all over the place), but in general, he maintains a more rustic outlook on the way he lives his life. Then he’ll shock you all over with a little bow that looks like invented it and that courts the world over should be scrambling to copy. In this case, he bowed his head slightly and waited for her to continue. He was probably hoping she’d ask for my hand or something.

“Stay for dinner. Do not travel before the dawn.” The woman spoke with a tone that was haughty and expectant, but I’m a student of voices. I heard warning in it too. Not from her; she wasn’t threatening us (not about this anyway). It was a warning delivered while her eyes strayed from Geralt’s face and her gaze darted to the hollow spaces between the fruitless apple trees. There was no way the witcher didn’t notice it. 

“An easy payment. We’ll pay it and take our leave when the sun rises tomorrow,” he said without giving anything else away. He watched as she turned to go back into the slumping house, a house about which I had misgivings but it was food and I was hungry and it would be better than sleeping on the ground. Granted, there was always the chance we could end up firewood, but in situations like this you really just have to trust in your witcher. And comfort yourself in knowing you can haunt him for eternity in the afterlife, because you’ll be bitter enough to conjure up your own ghost for something like that.

Geralt caught my arm as I walked past him, leaning down to murmur against my ear. It took me a second to actually focus on what he was saying; he must have chewed herbs during the day, because his breath was green and fresh and warm and something in my spine melted and shivered.  
“...close to the door,” he finished. I blinked at him, then blinked again to focus.

“What?”

Geralt press his mouth and sighed through his nose, glancing to the open door before us before leaning in again. 

“We’ll make sure you’re not half tree, so tell me if you feel anything strange. I want to be out just when the sun hits the horizon, so we’ll sleep close to the door,” he repeated. Ah, so many more words when I was fantasizing about a little ear nibble. What he was actually saying was so much less enticing. Though I did fancy remaining less woody, in the way he meant. 

He put his hand on my back as I nodded and continued up the steps. It was a lot of touching for him, honestly. Maybe he’d been legitimately worried that I would become an orchard ornament. Or maybe he was just poking me to see that I wasn’t already halfway there. I shuddered in momentary horror at the thought of seeing my skin like that. There arose a sudden panicked need to strip down just to see that I had normal skin after all. Then Geralt gave me another little push and I walked into the house without having gotten naked at all.

Geralt walked in after me. He wasn’t naked either. 

Obviously.

The woman was pulling a big black iron kettle off the hook by the fire, pouring it into three strangely shaped clear glass vessels. The liquid itself was a brown I refused to trust until the scent of the steam wafted over to me.

“Tea? Is that tea?” I knew it was, and somehow the fact that tea could be poisoned didn’t occur to me. I walked over to the sturdy table to watch her pour the third glass. It smelled even better up close.

“It is,” she said with a little smile. “I hope you don’t mind the cups. I find my proper dishware ends up getting used for not-food things, so then some of my other vessels have to come into use for food. She gestured for me to take one of the cups, which I happily did. 

Geralt was looking around the inside of the house, which retained the rounded shape from the outside even as the walls were lined with shelves that seemed to curve with the walls. The shelves were full of more strangely shaped glass jars and vessels of all sizes. Some were full of things, some were empty. To the left of the central fireplace was a half-drawn curtain which only partly obscured a workspace. Many more vessels were caught up in a huge contraption which was made of metal and wires that rose up to what seemed to be another chimney in the ceiling. Truth be told, it was a bit creepy. I stood with my tea and didn’t wander.

“You’re an alchemist,” Geralt pronounced with a small smile. The woman picked up her own tea and shrugged one shoulder.

“What of it?” she asked defensively.

“Alchemist? Isn’t that a...sort of fruitless occupation that old men with very white beards pursue?” I paused and felt a thrill of excitement. “Have you made any gold?” The house was unassuming, but she could have had a dragon’s hoard of it somewhere, for all I knew. Seemed like the sort of reason to be magically gluing people to your front walk.

The alchemist scowled at me and I held my tea to my chest protectively. I suppose that wasn’t the first time she’d been asked those questions.

“Gold isn’t the primary aim of a true alchemist,” she lectured. “Transmutation can happen to any material. I’m not trying to create gold.”

“What are you trying to create?” Geralt asked quietly from where he now stood, pulling aside the curtain to truly look over the alchemy device. Revealed, it was a remarkable thing, gleaming metals and shining glass. I had absolutely no idea how it worked, where it began and ended, but it did remind me of something I had once been bound to with crimson silken scarves for a truly unforgettable evening experience. I imagined not myself but Geralt...no, no, no. Best not to go there. I sipped my tea.

“That’s my own concern...witcher,” she replied.

“Well, whatever it is, it’s given you tea-brewing skills beyond compare,” I complimented the woman who had literally tried to turn me into a tree. Times change quickly. She graced me with a small, grateful smile. 

“I’m Tabita,” she offered.

“I’m called Jaskier, a bard of some renown, and this is Geralt. Of Rivia.” In case she hadn’t heard. 

“You’re welcome here,” Tabita replied almost formally. “Come, you’ll want to clean up before dinner. Bard, there is a special mix in the bath. It’ll help with any...lingering effects.”

The bath turned out to be a large tub of black sludge in the little heated room at the back of the house. I stepped into it awkwardly while Geralt scrubbed himself off in another tub of water. It felt like muck with a very fine silt in it and chilled me through when I finally sat down. Every inch, Tabita had instructed. Nothing like feeling your arse cheeks squelch. That’s a sound that should never ever be applied to your arse cheeks.

Sitting glumly back against the side of the tub (I’ll spare you the sound that movement made), I looked over at Geralt. I did more than glance, I suppose. I watched him with a hunger that was different than that which made me snatch the apple out of the tree. On second thought, maybe it wasn’t that different after all. His shoulders moved as though shrugging their way through life. His hands were large and brusque as he splashed water over his arms or scrubbed at his torso with the coarse cloth Tabita had provided. The water he was using had a faintly herbal smell, browner rather than floral. I could smell it over the slightly charcoal scent of the goo I was dutifully ladling over myself. 

“Don’t miss your face,” he said without even looking at me. I widened my eyes and turned my head away, never liking to be caught staring.

“My face was in no danger of turning to wood,” I responded, looking down at two handfuls of black sludge.

“Nor your tongue,” Geralt replied quickly, “I know. But cover it all nonetheless.”

It smelled even more intensely like I was coating myself in the remains of a bonfire once I had managed to coat myself. It was impossible to miss his smile, even though the witcher looked down to hide it. Wonderful. I could be his personal jester. 

“Glad this is funny to you,” I remarked drily. “If I sit here any longer, this crud will probably thicken and harden and I’ll have escaped a leafy horror only to be trapped inside a black shell instead.” 

Geralt stood and stepped out of the tub he had been in, hips lean as he wound a towel around them. “Come on.” He offered a hand, and I was too surprised to comment as I took it. The other tub was warm and I began to feel more human as the water sluiced off my gooey coating. I didn’t want to make anything off it, but after I rinsed my face, my skin actually felt even better than it had before. Miracle muck. 

“Hand me that towel, will you, Geralt?” I held out a clean, imperious hand, which, predictably, was ignored. Wiggling my fingers, I tried again, not sure what had distracted my witcher. “Just...fling it over here? Maybe? Nearby, at least?”

“You still have some of it on you. The cure.” 

It was ooze, not a cure, but why quibble? I sighed and ducked my head under the water again. “There? Did that clean it up?”

“No.” 

Suddenly he was kneeling beside the tub, closer than I’d thought he had been. For my part, I was more distinctly aware of mutual nudity than I had been with anyone in awhile. It was just a very particular sense of it, a bone-deep knowledge, an inescapable fact that sprang to mind once a second. Reaching into the tub, Geralt cupped some water in the palm of his hand, drawing me closer with his other hand on my shoulder.

“Here.” He tipped the water into the hollow of my collar bone, then we watched together as the diluted darkness slid down my chest. Again, he dipped his hand into the water, this time to trickle warm wetness down behind my right ear, giving a little belated rub to some of the soaked hair against my scalp there. I had given up breathing; I was a glass thing, fragile as the twisted weird vessels Tabita used in her vain pursuit of not-gold. If I inhaled too much, I would shatter. Or Geralt would pull his hand away, which was the worse fate. 

His fingers moved down to the water again, then trailed down under the edge of my jaw. Generally, in a moment like this I am bold and sweet; I knew that I should turn my head and catch his finger with my mouth, a kiss or to hold it between my lips, as the moment dictated. Instead, I froze. Seized up like an old wagon wheel. The moment lingered politely then fell away as Geralt lowered his hand quickly when he heard Tabita call from inside the main area of the house.

“Dinner! Make sure you’re clothed before you step foot in here!” 

Geralt’s half smile was wry as he moved away, leaving me stewing in the herb water while he started pulling on his clothing. A brief flash of skin as his towel fell away, then somehow suddenly he was completely dressed, rolling up his sleeves to keep them out of the way. He didn’t say anything as he walked out of the bathing room. 

I sat a minute longer, feeling as though I was putting down roots into the damned bathtub. What a wasted opportunity! I had never frozen up like that before. I’m not shy by nature, I don’t know if people know this about me. I stood up like a rainshower, finally able to move, then caught my foot on the edge of the tub while I was stepping out and nearly brained myself on the edge of the goo-filled one. 

“Jaskier,” the familiar growl came from the doorway. There I was, on hands and knees, dripping and trying to organize my various hurts (knees, check, foot, check, oh gods, are my hands alright? check), and he only said my name, looked at me, sighed, then turned to walk away again. 

“Damn it!” I slammed my hand down onto the floor, then sat back and cradled it remorsefully. A missed moment of sensual enticement is one thing, damaging one’s hand is quite another. 

I was still sullen when I walked in to dinner.


	4. The First Bite of the Apple is the Sweetest, Unfortunately

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As night falls, there are dangers afoot...which isn't exactly unusual, but that doesn't make for a good night's sleep regardless.

The sky darkened quickly in the orchard, so night seemed to come on quickly. Night always does. It doesn’t matter what time of year, those twilight moments never last, which is really a shame. If one was to believe songs, the only actual times of day are dawn, twilight, and midnight. Dusk lasts an eternity, allowing lovers one final evening or a curse’s transformation fifteen verses to accomplish. Dawn always goes the quickest, musically. It gives just enough time to eye up some dew and a maiden and a rose, and that just about covers it. Or it gives time for a lover to flee a bedroom by a trellis or something. Midnight is fun for curses or trysts by moonlight. But those twilight hours, ah, those are the magical ones, the languid ones, the ones you can sing about in mellow tones of lavender and rose and gold. In real life, the sun goes down like a duck with an anchor tied to one leg. 

So, the apple trees ate up the sunset, and the small windows couldn’t even pull in the slight light remaining, so we ate dinner in the light of Tabita’s strange lamps. The bright metal reflected the dancing light that flickered in the glass globes, each a different shape. Dinner was fine, the food a mixture of all the foods the alchemist had prepared for the last few days, the leftover bowls of the dishes she hadn’t finished. Predictably, many were in some way apple-enhanced, from a sort of apple glazed pork to a stew dotted with chunks of meat and vegetables and apples because why not? 

We dawdled over dessert while the darkness claimed the outdoors. Tabita had shuttered the windows against the night, but it seemed to creep in anyway, finding little cracks between the boards of the door and little crumbling bits of masonry. The lights kept it at bay, but personally, I hated to think of the orchard out there. The orchard inhabited by this lone woman with an empty village at the other end of the path. 

But who was I to judge? I stabbed my fork into the apple tart like any other innocent man and listened to Tabita talk about her experiments. They made no sense, like any other type of magic. You don’t really expect it to, and sometimes I wonder if magic folk actually know what they’re talking about or if they’re making it up as they go, expecting their listeners to nod sagely anyway. Even other mages. 

“How did you come to be here alone?” Geralt asked finally. It wasn’t an abrupt question; he’d asked leading, casual question before. He’s a master interrogator, actually. Gets things out of me all the time that I in no way mean to tell him. There are some things I play very close to my chest, but I worry that one of these days he’s going to get those out of me too. And what a day that’ll be. Hopefully we’re both naked by that point. Or his weapons aren’t nearby.

Tabita sipped at her cup (cider, I know, I know, you’re surprised) before answering, a thoughtful sip. A suspicious sip? 

“My parents were here before me. Alchemists both of them. He had been her father’s apprentice, though she was the one with the real ideas. He deferred to her always.” Tabita shook her head. “There was nothing she couldn’t figure out.”

I considered asking about the gold again and decided against it.

“So the three of you were here?” Geralt asked. She nodded, looking into her cup. In the lamp light, the cider was the same color as the bright metal all around. 

“I grew up here, learned their art from them. Alchemy, as you know, is magic as craft, magic of raw materials. It isn’t like the work of the mages. It is healthier work. Like farmers working the land.” Tabita set her glass down. “I don’t know if that makes people trust us more or less. After the accident...my father wasn’t the same. One day, I awoke and the door was open. My father was gone. Nothing in the house was disturbed or taken. I searched for him, for any sign…” She broke off, shaking her head. “There was no violence against him. We had worked late into the night on one of our experiments. Whatever ate at him after the accident that took my mother, it moved him to simply walk out into the world. Since then, I’ve never heard from him or of him.”

She spoke as though reciting the blandest of facts, how to make bread or something, but a chill went straight through me. Suddenly, I didn’t relish the thought of sleeping close to the door at all. What had called her father out into the night? Had he opened the door from within or had something out there opened it from him? My imagination is a blessing and a curse.

Geralt simply nodded knowingly, finishing his cup of cider. 

“How long has the village been empty?” he asked with the same mild interest. 

“Oh...nearly forever, I imagine. Traders used to set up markets there, but then they go away. I never knew it to be a village proper.” She spoke easily and Geralt’s expression never changed, but even I know a lie when I hear one. I looked over to try to catch his eye, but he didn’t even look over at me. So our knowing, mutual, shared glance never came into being. Which is a shame. I have a remarkable shared glance, full of mystery and dark humor. And there it had just been wasted.

“It must have been an old place then. A forgotten place. Strange how well-kept everything still is,” Geralt commented. He sat so still it was like having a vaguely polite statue at the table.

“I suppose the traders do that,” Tabita said carelessly.

“You don’t go down there yourself?” I asked, unable to keep myself quiet another moment. How could she be so calm about it, the eeriness of her whole setup? 

“No,” she answered simply, reaching over to refill out glasses from the dark bottle of cider. “It holds no interest for me. What will I do with an empty town when I have my work to keep me busy?

Again, I tried to share a look to no avail. Was nobody going to comment on the fact that her work still required raw materials, that she herself needed food and household goods? No? Nobody? Fine. I sipped my cider. 

“Your work must occupy you fully.” Whatever Geralt said next was half lost to me as a wave of exhaustion swept over me. It had been a long, I recognized, but the bath and food had pepped me up again. Now I felt as if the hours had rushed ahead and me with them. My eyes felt like there was sand in them and the lids were heavy in a desire to cover them and soothe them. I felt that inevitable tug of fought-for consciousness when my chin dipped and I pulled myself back up to waking with an effort.

Taking a deep breath and blinking a few times, I put my hand on the table and stretched out my fingers. Neither of the other two seemed tired, and they were conversing very naturally while I was over on the other side of the table having a literal battle to stay awake. Moving my fingers against the grain of the table, I worked out the fingering of a more complicated song (the ballad “Flowers Only Grow on One Spot on My Grave,” maybe you’ve heard of it?). It worked for a moment, and I could follow what was being said.

“The trees grow as they do because under each one, there lies a sleeper,” Tabita said in her clear voice. “The tree feeds off the sleeper and produces lovely apples.” She turned to smile at me. “What’s the matter, Jaskier?”

“What did...you say about the trees?” I asked in horror.

“I said that they grow as they do because of the rainfall the valley gets during the winter,” she said. Geralt was watching me now, the little frown line between his brows. 

“That’s not...that’s not what you said.” I looked at him, feeling the dizzying weariness wash over me again. “That’s not what she said.” 

“Jaskier…” Geralt’s frown deepened slightly.

“It’s not what...she said,” I tried again, but the words in my head weren’t quite what made it out of my mouth. Gravity suddenly took on a wild party life of its own and I felt myself pulled back. Obviously, the open air has no concern for a falling man, and suddenly the ground was at my back, forcing the breath out of me in a sharp gasp. 

My ears were still working fine, however, and I heard the rough sound of benches pushed away from the table as Geralt and Tabita both rushed over to me. The sensation of Geralt’s hand beneath my shoulder as he tried to help me sit up again was familiar; honestly, he seems to enjoy giving me little pushes or grabbing me (not in fun ways) to make me go where he’d like me to, so it’s a feeling and a grip I know well. 

“Jaskier!” His voice was gruff but slightly more urgent while I struggled to open my eyes and raise my head properly.

“Traveling is exhausting,” Tabita said evenly. I saw her face as she bent over me, the concerned shape of her eyebrows not really making it to her eyes, which had no concerned shape whatsoever. “I’ll lay out the blankets so he can rest.”

Geralt nodded and had no reaction as she continued.

“Resting beneath a tree will give the apples so much more life. Now that the orchard’s had a taste of you, it is eager to sink its roots directly into your veins.” She moved away out of my line of vision and that seemed even more terrifying. I like to see where the bad guys are coming from, thank you very much. 

“Jaskier,” Geralt said again. “Come on, get up. You should sleep.” 

“What she said,” I mumbled, reaching for the front of his shirt and managing to hook my hand around the side of his neck. The warmth of the chain he always wore for that guild pendant seemed to burn against the side of my hand. I was so very cold. 

“Come on,” he repeated, his own voice a little tighter as he let go of my shoulder for a moment. At that moment, I did not have quite the control over my own body that I thought I had, and I dropped like a marionette with cut strings. Just that graceful. Be thankful for small favors, Jaskier, I chide myself. At least I didn’t have to see myself. I want to think it was pretty, but I know it wasn’t. Spare me my pride.

My head hit the floor and I heard the thud of it but didn’t really feel it. I couldn’t really feel my fingers either, even as I desperately tried to move them. They twitched vaguely even as I put all my will into forcing them through the chords of “The Witcher and the Bluebell.” It’s not a song I wrote, sadly, but one that I had made some delightful adjustments to, some complications to the melody that, I think, really make it pop. I’m pretty sure in years to come everyone will be singing my version rather than the rather pedestrian version hitherto thought of as “the standard.”

In that moment, I thought I heard my name again and that grip on my shoulder. Forcing my eyes open, I at least saw Geralt’s face slightly contorted with worry or stomach upset. I hoped very badly it was worry as I barely felt his arm around me pulling me up to his chest. The coldness was all consuming and it had become very clear that I wasn’t just tired. Something terrible was happening, and it was tragically happening to me. My last thought before the darkness slammed down like an ex-lover’s window upon one’s fingers was: I hope that black goo made me smell nice enough for him to notice. 

Then there was nothing.


	5. The Song of Never-Axe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nighttime continues to be dangerous, and it's even worse when you can't see the forest for the trees. That's how the saying goes, right? Jaskier wants to get away from any type of tree, wood, forest, particularly when they seem to be the bloodthirsty variety so popular in these parts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who is reading along. I am always drawn to the twisted forms of fairy tales, which are so often their original versions, and that's one of the things that brought me to this fandom. Oh, yeah, and how much I love the tempestuous relationship between Geralt and Jaskier.

How many of you really enjoy sleeping? Not resting, lounging, basking in lazy languor when you should be doing other tasks that aren’t even that difficult but that will take time that can be otherwise spent stretched out, breechless and with a drink in hand. I don’t mean those precious hours. I mean actual sleep. Either slowly slipped into while thinking about all the things you need to do the next day or dropped into after an utterly exhausting day where you were almost killed and you don’t know if you’ll be slain during the night. Or if, you know, you were flung into sleep in such a way that it seemed like death and nobody seemed to be that concerned about the terrifying circumstances surrounding it and you feel sometimes like you’re the only person with any sense around and that’s going to come as a rude shock when you’re dead and everyone’s looking around at everyone else for answers and you’re just a pretty corpse making a rude gesture with your right hand. 

As you might have surmised, I like rest and dislike sleep, in those terms. Maybe it’s life on the road that makes you distrust sleep even when you need it so very badly. Maybe you know you’d feel better if Geralt always agreed to sleep on the side of the room closest to the questionable inn’s door. Maybe you’d like it better if you didn’t wake up choking on literal dirt trickling into your nose and mouth as you struggled to return to consciousness. 

Maybe that’s just me.

Maybe I wouldn’t have these types of trust issues if these types of things didn’t happen to me.

In any event, I was literally propelled to wakefulness with a mouth full of dirt and the immediate panic that accompanies knowing you’ve been buried alive. The earth is extremely heavy on a body, and those structures you believed to be strong are suddenly not quite as sturdy as you’d been led to believe. Ribs and skulls and all those stupid things. I was flailing against the very earth itself, and there isn’t a lot to say about how insignificant one can feel against those sorts of odds. 

Air was making it into my lungs however, and as I managed to punch through a surface and claw my way part way out of the dirt like a living nightmare, I understood that I hadn’t been planted six feet under. I had only been loosely covered, shallowly buried, close by the large, looming, looping roots of one of the biggest apple trees in the orchard. There was a brilliantly bright moon overhead making shadows of all the empty branches, so that the ground was a twisting maze of shapes. It was impossible to tell which were the lines of shadows and which were actual roots, pressing themselves out of the ground as though hunting for their own sustenance.   
My priority, obviously, was getting out of the literal dirt and onto the path. In total honesty, the path hadn’t been particularly friendly earlier but there were no visible roots, nothing shifting that I could see, so I considered it a win when I was finally standing upon it. My legs were shaking and my knees seemed loathe to actually hold me up, but I was standing, I was no longer buried, and those both seemed to be huge victories. I brushed some remaining soil off by sleeves and breeches, those little clods that had clung in folds. I wanted to be rid of all of them. The sensation was still there, earth in my mouth and pressing against my eyelids. The taste of it remained in my dry mouth

I wanted wine or I wanted to cry. At that moment, a worm dropped onto my shoulder from where it had been resting behind my ear. With a short, sharp cry, I brushed it off my shoulder and stood staring at it with horror where it fell into the dirt. Beyond it, I could still just make out the slightly deeper darkness of the hole in which I’d been planted until very recently. The shudder was not theatrical.

Correction. I wanted wine and I wanted to cry. 

There was a low but horrible noise around me, something that was between cracking and straining, like someone pushing at a locked door. It was the trees, something quickening the sap within their woody veins to make them shift against the bark that enclosed them. I squinted against the dim light but couldn’t actually see any movement. There was that impulse within me that wanted to run, but where would I go? My eyes scanned the ground, and there it was-- the tendril shadows shifted along the ground where the moonlight lay in patches around. The sound came again and I bit back a yelp, swallowing it down along with another throat-clogging bit of dirt.

The trees were definitely moving. They wanted me back. Likely because I was, tragically for myself, tasty. Roots near the path squirmed under the loosened soil, parting the covering of leaves as the questing ends approached the walkway. This time I was trapped on the spot in horror. I was watching and unable to do anything to help myself. 

Something grabbed onto the back of my doublet and jerked me back. While I consider myself to have relatively good balance and attractively muscles calves, I was nearly pulled off my off my feet. With an undignified squawk.

“Quiet,” a familiar voice growled against my ear. His hair always smells like myrtle. I let myself sag back against his chest with more relief than even I wanted to admit. “Take a deep breath.”

An odd command, but when I did I realized I hadn’t really been breathing much, what with the buried alive and terror combination. The little spots that had been floating in my vision dissipated. 

Geralt wrapped one arm around my waist, and we stood there just like that, on the path, likely being sniffed out by killer trees, for a few silent minutes. The trees were quiet again, but it felt like they were waiting. 

“Geralt,” I whispered. “We need to get out of here.” It seemed obvious, but here we were. Standing. Romantically standing, but standing nonetheless. 

“Not yet,” he said in a low voice. I heard Roach nicker behind us, tossing her head to make her tack jingle just a bit. What the hell was everyone waiting for? I pulled a bit to stand up more on my own power and was tugged back gently by his hand on my stomach. Fine. I turned my head to look at him as best I could and saw that the Witcher’s gaze was fixed further on down the path. I turned my head that way to see what he was watching.

At the end of the path stood that slumping, rounded house. Geralt’s eyes were gold in the reflected moonlight, bright as the metal instruments that we now knew filled up those many shelves. He was watching the door with a look so intense I felt that it must surely compel the thing to unlock itself, the latch to move under its own power to release and let the door swing open before him. 

Yet when the door did open, silent on its well-oiled hinges, I was still somehow shocked. Tabita stood framed by the doorway; even at this distance I could see her eyes flick to me before resting on Geralt. She walked down the two steps to the path on light feet and I did not protest when Geralt released me, using his arm to shoo me behind himself as he stepped forward.

“Tabita,” he said almost patiently, sounding tired. I supposed it was very late. 

“You can’t take him. I’ll let you go, but you can’t take him back,” she said, voice teary even as her eyes were clear. 

“Your father didn’t just walk away, did he? Or rather...he didn’t go very far,” Geralt said, ignoring her statement. It was a conversational technique that I tended to find a bit frustrating, personally. Clearly Tabita agreed.

“I won’t let the orchard starve,” she said with determination, stopping on the path. Her fists were clenched by her sides, empty hands. No weapons.

“It was the alchemy, wasn’t it?” Geralt continued. “Something he created, a concoction that transformed him. Mutated him.”

“No.” Tabita pressed her mouth, but she couldn’t hide the trembling of her lower lip. “I made it. And didn’t contain it. It would would have fallen on me had he not been there first. At first, it seemed to have no effect. He laughed about it through dinner, told me to stop apologizing and stop worrying about it. All through the next day, he was quiet, but reassured me all was well. The day after, he was nearly silent, staring at his hands spread out on the table, yet still be maintained that nothing was wrong. What could I do? Go to the villagers who disdained us? Beg them for help? Idiots. What could they even do? What did they know of such matters. And then the next night…” She paused, expression hardening. “I did not lie to you. He walked out of the house and stood near one of the old trees. It was then he took root. His body twisted and grew and he made no sound. All I could hear was the rush of new wood, the crackling of bark as it overcame him.” 

Geralt nodded as though this was a perfectly normal story to be told about someone’s parent. Meanwhile I was still listening to this horrible story through the dirt in my ears from where she’d literally buried me alive near her paternal tree. 

“The villagers?”

“He needed to be fed. Part of the work we had done...the vitality…” Tabita licked her lips, biting back the words as though we were about to steal her life’s work and she couldn’t trust us with trade secrets. “I knew what he needed. It’s a simple matter. They don’t suffer.”

I took a deep breath, feeling I was the best suited to add to this particular part of the conversation.

“Actually, it was extremely-”

“Jaskier.” Geralt didn’t even look at me; he kept his eyes on the alchemist. “You’ve emptied the village.”

Tabita nodded. “Travelers still come through. I’m lucky in that, when they do come. It isn’t enough, but we get by. Now that it’s the whole orchard…” She took a deep breath. “You saw. There was only one apple.”

One apple. One bit of bait. I was a stupid and hungry little fish. 

Geralt inhaled and let it go in a long sigh. “You know I can’t let you continue. Your father isn’t your father any longer. A tree is not meant to take the life of others.”

“What? As though trees are not chopped down daily to build houses. Or to burn for warmth,” she shot back viciously. “Why should not a tree cut down a human to take what it needs from them?”

You hate when they have a point. There’s always that point of the conversation with the monster (if it’s the type to converse, a lot of them literally just go for the jugular because they’re the peckish type of monster with no one to tell their backstory) where something is said and something in your gut agrees, and that’s the roughest bit in general. I get that, and Geralt reacts to it like someone’s inflicted a wound. Not physically, but there’s a flicker of pale eyelash that I’ve come to recognize. 

“Your father gave his life for you. It was a gift. What you’re doing for him is to extend his pain. The orchard is bent and twisted, Tabita. Real apple trees are not so gnarled. There is pain here, because you feed him pain.” Geralt’s voice was still patient. “This must end. Let your father go.”

She wasn’t going to. That much was fairly obvious. But the trees were not so mobile that their branches could go to battle with a Witcher (gods, I hoped they weren’t) and Tabita wouldn’t be that foolish to try him herself. But for some reason, we all stood there on the path, listening to the wind in the dry branches and the tortured creak of old wood until I realized that the branches were all stretched in one direction above us. They were angled toward her, to the spot where Tabita stood before her little house. As though we weren’t there at all, she looked up, pushing herself up on tiptoe to touch one of the branches as it lowered toward her cheek. 

“No.” She whispered her refusal as the branch caressed her face, and when she lifted her eyes, there was murder in them. At once, the trees were moving again; the noise was almost deafening as the branches whipped together toward us. 

I could hear Roach’s hooves on the path as she shifted weight, and all I wanted to do was run. “Geralt!” 

He had one sword out of its sheath along his back in a smooth movement that made the hilt seem to jump into his hand. He swiped the keen blade through the approaching branches quickly, then whirled around to take out another grouping. They were not like vines; the sound was more like chopping wood, dense and hollow, and the tips could not grasp. They were sharp, sharded branch ends that likely sought to impale. 

I jumped back out of the way of a heavier tree limb that was slower but would be heavier had it hit. “Geralt! On your left!” I like to think I was helpful as he lightly jumped up onto the lowered branch and rode it with bent knees to keep his balance as it moved forward. From this perch, the Witcher swung his blade in a wide arc to his right side, taking off another group of branches. They clattered to the path when they fell, no longer animated. They didn’t even sound like green wood at all; they were dry as wood set apart to dry for the fire. 

A swift swipe of a branch knocked Geralt off the wider, moving limb, and he rolled as he hit the ground, coming up with dried leaves in his pale hair. He immediately evaded another attack, bringing his sword up to knock the heavy wood away from himself as he gained his feet. He moved too smoothly to be mistaken for human, which was good-- a human would not have lasted against the sylvanian onslaught he was enduring. 

I was just trying to stay out of the way, honestly, and shouting for him to notice things he was...probably already well-aware of. But we all like to feel like we’re helping, and that was how I was doing my part. Weaponless. It’s a bit of a stress sometimes. Like just then, when an enterprising root wound its way around my ankle and yanked me down. I just got my hands underneath me as I fell, then remembered they are literally my livelihood. With all the grace of a caught fish, I torqued my torso as I fell so that I landed hard on my shoulder instead, hands safely preserved. I groaned with the impact, but had no time to fend off the loop around my boot because another root had risen from that unhallowed soil to wrap itself around my neck. I stopped moving entirely. 

“Geralt.” I cleared by throat and tried again. I felt like I was choking on dirt once more, and my voice was thready and faint and encumbered. “Geralt!” 

The world stopped. No, not stopped. Just paused. Paused in that stiff but full way, something close to bursting, taut and uncomfortable, a breath held that was suffocating you from the inside. Geralt’s golden eyes, the irises rimmed with battle dark, slide over to me, then his head turned to Tabita where she stood. 

“I’ll take your bard this way, if you attack my father again. I’ll take him before your eyes,” she said. There were tears in her eyes. I also had tears in my eyes for different reasons. 

“My bard is alive. Your father is gone, Tabita.” Geralt was slightly out of breath from the fight, body still ready to jump back in. 

“He is here. He knows.” Her grief was pitiable and real; I would have been much more sympathetic if she stopped trying to feed me to her dead tree father for five minutes. 

“He knows it’s time.” Geralt’s voice shifted slightly, and I knew that sound. It was the vocal equivalent of his head tilt, the moment where he was saying that the conversation was over, a decision could be made here, and if it wasn’t the right one, he would complete the conversation in his own way. Me, on the ground and terrified and almost plant food, could tell she was not going to give in.

“What would you know, Witcher? How many lifetimes have you lived?” she spat, raising her arm as the sharp branches swept forward again. 

This time he didn’t meet them with his sword. He ducked under them and his hand moved forward, low to the ground. Being down there too, I got a good view as he held his palm outward, index finger bent in as he spread his others. There was a second of stillness.

The fire caught on the exposed roots as if they were only kindling, spreading through the structures and igniting tree after tree as if being wicked up through ribbons. The cruel roots binding me fell away immediately, pulling back so swiftly I felt the one that had been wrapped around my throat slice the skin of my neck as it withdrew like a razor. Scrambling to my feet, I rushed over to Geralt. He gestured me back to Roach, eyes on the fire and Tabita.  
“Tabita!” he called, but she ignored him, trying to extinguish what he’d started. The flames were loud around us, and a horrified part of me thought I would hear the anguish of the trees, but they themselves were silent. They were only dried wood, ready to let go; anything green and growing within them had been dead a long time.

“Geralt, come on.” I tried to keep my voice level as the heat around us rose. A burning branch fell onto the path between us and where Roach was standing, her eyes rolling with discomfort. “Geralt!” 

He didn’t want to leave her, and she wouldn’t leave. The alchemist was filling buckets from the trough by the door, flinging it uselessly onto the edges of a conflagration she had no hopes of containing. Her father was gone. Had been gone. Only her grief remained. 

“Geralt!”

He finally turned and saw me, sheathing his sword as he strode back down the path toward Roach. Mounting her in a smooth step, he reached down and dragged me up onto her back behind him. It wasn’t graceful, and you know what, I wasn’t proud. I just wanted to be away from here, from the flaming, dead trees and the woman with her unhinged, homicidal grief. The crackling was the only sound, the smoke was heavy and thick, and Roach’s hooves on the path back to the village seemed the only echo of sanity as we escaped. 

We paused in the empty town square, Geralt bringing Roach about. Back where we had been, no trace of those trees remained. It was all swallowed up by smoke that was lit from within by streaks of orange and gold. I thought of the light gleaming on the curves of Tabita’s alchemical instruments and squeezed my eyes shut. Dawn was breaking and the night had been so very very long.

The Witcher didn’t make a sound as he turned Roach about again, heading out of the village the way we’d arrived. I kept my eyes closed and rested my forehead against his back. The muscles under his shirt tightened (he wasn’t wearing armor, I thought, because it’s nighttime, and he should be sleeping), but he didn’t tell me to sit up. So I stayed like that, hands on his waist, as we rode back to meet the coming day.


End file.
